Executive summary

wokati Technologies offer fast, flexible and secure cloud computing solutions to organisations at all levels. They achieve this through the wokatiBox Cloud PC – a 2" desktop cube, powered by the cloud. This offers users easy access to a best-in-class virtual desktop experience. Users depend on the system's speed of deployment, robust data security and consistent performance, as well as its scope for fast, cost-effective scalability as requirements evolve. As a result, wokati Technologies have highly specific requirements when it comes to selecting partners with which to develop and maintain their own infrastructures.

To this end, wokati Technologies have chosen OVH as their datacentre partner in order to deliver the performance their users expect. Their virtual desktop services are now hosted exclusively in the OVH Private Cloud, on a global datacentre infrastructure, with redundant elements and comprehensive SLAs helping to guarantee a world-class standard service quality at all times.

“I am well pleased with our decision to adopt OVH as our primary global datacentre and network infrastructure provider. Our initial projects have provided immediate, measurable benefits to our core business at a time where we are coming to market fast. This bodes well for the future...”

Ashoka Reddy – Founder & CEO of wokati Technologies UK

The challenge

Speed, security, space and simplicity – in terms of performance, deployment and development – are vital in the modern digital landscape, and the wokatiBox Cloud PC system is designed to meet these challenges, with an average application load time of 20 seconds. This means new virtual machines must be ready to deploy and use at a moment’s notice, so users can quickly upscale their infrastructures, adding new virtual machines with a single click. Flexibility – both in terms of the choice of hardware and configuration of the virtualisation technology – was vital to wokati Technologies’s long-term plans.

Furthermore, wokati Technologies’ users expect complete consistency of performance and data security at all times, with the ability to absorb peak loads, and no unexpected downtime during system updates or hardware failures. Guaranteed SLAs are therefore essential, in order to maintain security and service quality, and provide users with complete peace of mind as their infrastructures evolve.

“Many businesses invest in big servers that they can grow into (like wearing baggy trousers when we’re children!), but, most computers run at sub-30% capacity, and storage-wise they’re probably only using a tiny percentage. People pay for empty space, but with OVH and virtualisation, they don’t need that, because we fill up the servers to the max. And through virtualisation, we have an inherently green technology, as it costs a lot to power a datacentre.”

Ashoka Reddy, Founder & CEO of wokati Technologies UK

The solution

wokati’ Technologies’ virtual desktop infrastructure was created entirely in OVH’s Private Cloud, and hosted in its Roubaix datacentre in France. This followed a period of intensive consultation between wokati Technologies and OVH’s teams, in order to design and deliver an infrastructure that would be able to meet (and routinely exceed) the needs of the end users, both now and in the future. A key part of this was the use of a VMware vSphere Hypervisor to allow for fast deployment and configuration of new VMs, where and when they were needed.

This solution not only met wokati Technologies’ strict demands with regards to performance – bringing application presentation times for the wokatiBox down from one minute to 20 seconds from the point of plug-in– but did so while achieving savings of 10-20% compared to a public cloud infrastructure. Furthermore, network speed tests showed that speeds of more than 700Mbps were easily achievable for both uploads and downloads, with less than 10ms of latency.

The use of a European datacentre proved a major advantage for wokati Technologies, allowing them to access in-time-zone support, and work closely with OVH’s experts to ensure their chosen hardware would prove fit-for-purpose. This involved selecting the exact specifications of the servers that would be used, then putting them through an intensive period of testing to ensure that they would be able to handle the anticipated peak loads, and also have the capacity to enable future upscaling. This helped develop wokati’s deep knowledge of how their VMs could most effectively be deployed, so they could concentrate on monitoring and enhancing performance as soon as they went live. As part of this development process, redundant elements were incorporated where appropriate, to help ensure the system could continue running, even in the event of the unexpected.

During the rollout of wokati Technologies’ Private Cloud infrastructure, guaranteed SLAs were agreed upon and put in place to ensure performance would remain consistent, regardless of any changes in circumstance, short of ‘acts of god’. OVH’s well-established network ensured that establishing these SLAs was relatively straightforward, and did not involve any additional costs, as the necessary measures were already inbuilt into the infrastructure.

Both before and after deployment, the educational resources on virtualisation and cloud computing provided by OVH and VMware, proved to be extremely valuable to the wokati team. These materials helped them get the most out of their OVH resources and respond effectively to customer requests. This included online guides and videos, and the regular Private Cloud training offered during OVH Academies, at our London offices.

The result

The successful partnership between wokati Technologies and OVH is already approaching the next stage of its development, with experts from both companies collaborating to identify areas where their infrastructure could be developed even further. In particular, the launch of OVH’s flagship datacentre in the UK has opened up the opportunity to expand wokati’s network across both datacentres, with extensive disaster recovery measures. The implementation of the NSX Firewall is also planned for the very near future, to further enhance both the security of customer data and wokati’s level of control and flexibility.

Direct contact with OVH’s senior executives provides wokati Technologies with the opportunity to influence the long-term technology roadmap. In keeping with this spirit of collaboration, a dedicated, accessible OVH account team are in regular contact with wokati’s own teams to review progress and identify new opportunities.

Discussions are taking place regarding the development of GPUs within the Private Cloud to better accommodate the needs of a leading architecture firm who are making use of wokati’s facilities. The partnership between wokati Technologies and OVH has provided an ideal foundation for such innovation going forward.

“What’s important is the relationship with OVH – our high-level technical partnership – because we’re going to make a lifelong commitment now. In that regard, I see our growth as combined growth.”